The argument nobody dares to make – what if Leicester were too loyal to Claudio Ranieri?

In the few days after Claudio Ranieri was sacked by Leicester, I was caught up with the same emotions as pretty much everyone else. ‘Did the biggest Cinderella story in the history of sport mean nothing to the greedy owners?’ etc.

But let me put forward the complete opposite view, devoid of sentiment. Maybe Claudio Ranieri should have been sacked sooner. And not just sooner, straight after he won the title.

When they won the league, the opportunity Leicester were presented with – which admittedly Ranieri presented them with – was the chance to become a top European club. In the summer, Leicester could have competed with all but the absolute crème de la crème of the continent to sign the game’s biggest stars.

The club’s owners could have built a dynasty if they had just put aside their better instincts.

Ditch Ranieri and get in a manager with the contacts to attract football’s top players. And don’t just apply that approach to the manager. Jamie Vardy was 29 when he won the league. If Arsenal wanted him let them have him. Captain Wes Morgan was 32.

N’Golo Kante was only 24. Who cares if he wants to leave, you don’t sell him for a third of his market value just because you think you owe it to him.

Maybe I can see this side of the coin more than others because I support a club that is leading the unsentimental sacking revolution. Three months after Watford got promoted, the club turned up at Everton on the first day of the Premier League season with a new manager and six new signings in the starting line-up.

Then last summer, that manager was also controversially sacked. The result is that the team that got Watford promoted has been immortalised in the minds of supporters and the team that has kept the club away from relegation trouble is arguably much less popular than it should be. But nevertheless the owners achieved what they set out to achieve.

A similar story could be seen at Southampton, where the brutal sacking of Nigel Adkins, after he led the club to two promotions, brought in a new era of unqualified success.

On the other hand, if you look at the worst teams in the Premier League, they tend to be the ones that react to events. Swansea sacked their past three managers as a response to poor form, Sunderland had no plan in place when their manager was poached by England and Hull stupidly hired a caretaker as manager off the back of two wins.

If you want to be successful in the modern game, you have to preempt anything that could go wrong before it does go wrong. The biggest fundamental change is that in the past this was the manager’s job. Now it’s the owner’s job.

In reality, sentimental loyalty to the manager is somewhat out of step with 21st century football, because in past generations this loyalty wasn’t so much based on sentiment as necessity.

When there’s a local owner, local players, a local manager and not a huge amount of money, the owner is likely to accept that the manager knows more about football than he does, and bow to his wisdom.

But with a global game and billionaire owners, there is no reason for this to be the case. However little he might know himself, the owner can pay any of the world’s biggest football experts for advice, if he chooses to do so.

Following Ranieri’s sacking, Italian paper La Gazzetta dello Sport were so infuriated that they claimed the club he made a prince had turned back into a frog.

But the truth is Leicester’s owners threw away the chance to become genuine footballing royalty when they stayed loyal to a whole group of frogs for fear of hurting their feelings.